Marta Zapała-Kraj 
Medieval Women in the Mirror of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Literary Output 

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2021 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies – Literature, grade: 5.0, , language: English, abstract: What can we say about Chaucer’s life with certainty? If we were to be honest – nothing can be said about either his private life or, for example, the exact date of his birth. He, himself – the one who led the English literature to the European peaks, mentions in 1386 that he might be ‘forty and something’.

Chaucer’s life was quite well recorder in numerous official documents. In the further part of my discourse I shall explain why it was so. Geoffrey Chaucer – using the pathetic description – one of the Founding Fathers of English literature, had glamorous and satisfying from the mercantile point of view life. His career allowed him to travel extensively and to see and experience much more than the average human-being of the Middle Ages could imagine.

The rare periods in his life when he was short of money revealed the self-made man, able to find himself a job that would provide him satisfying profit. What else than a broad mind and brilliant career could satisfy a medieval man? Chaucer proved to be a man far ahead his times, someone whom we could call the Renaissance Man. Being exposed to art and literature, the achievements of his age, he decided to take part in creating it, not only being a passive observer.

And so not only did he translate fragments of Italian and French literature to make them broadly known in his home country but also he wrote his own outstanding works. Most of them probably imitations or borrowings from French or Italian texts. However, Chaucer’s unquestionable skill to portray and mock the society of the Medieval times will remain immortal in the superb Canterbury Tales.